Chronocidal

That's the edge of the skull I think, but it doesn't become clear until a split second before the valk blows. The skull is illuminated by the explosion for a short time.

Actually, if you go a few more frames forward, you can just make out the skull markings. It's really dim though, and I don't think the stripes are green.

Technically I don't really collect die-cast anymore, I prefer the plastic variety. But go back about 15 years, and it's a different story... I collected all the little die-cast planes you could get for about $.85 back then.. the Dyna-flites, and Skybusters, etc.. loved those things. Actually, when I think back it's kinda freaky.. most kids sleep with a stuffed toy as a little kid.. I cuddled up with my favorite toy planes.... yeah.. I know. Is it any wonder I'm an aeronautics major?

If that thing does transform, it's probably a duplicate of that transforming Hasegawa kit that's been seen around.. that thing looks like a part-by-part duplicate of the Hasegawa -19 judging by some of the part seams and the overall shape.

I'd highly recommend FLCL, especially ep5.. total random insanity can be a good thing to cure depression. I think being high on caffein (or your own drug of choice) helps a bit though. FLCL also seems to make quite a bit more sense if you don't sleep for a few days.

Well, goofy maybe, but unreal definitely.. when was the last time you saw someone diffuse a fist fight by jumping away from the punches while singing "Lean On Me" or some equivalent? Given the history of Macross, Basara did have a good reason to try singing to distract the alien invaders, since, heck, it worked before. I can understand the musician thing, I come from a musical family, play a few instruments, etc... the "coming from the heart" thing makes perfect sense to me, personally I think that's the best kind of music. But you have to draw the line somewhere. I don't sing to avoid confrontations, or burst out into a jazz trumpet lick when someone insults me. Granted, it'll probably at least get people off your case since they'll assume you're just plain nuts, but it wouldn't be my first choice of retaliations.

I guess it just kind of comes down to whether pacifism works or not. Pacifism would work, just as long as everyone agrees to it. Once someone renounces it, it doesn't work for anyone. Someone once told me, if you want to show a pacifist the error of his ways, punch him in the face repeatedly. Cruel, yes.. but there's a painful truth in that. I guess I could say I'm pacifistic to a point.. I'd much rather avoid confrontations entirely than fight through them, and I'd rather everyone just got along. But there has to be a line somewhere, and if someone or something threatens something that I hold dear, I'm going to do my best to fight it any way I can. No, violence isn't the answer. But sometimes it's the only language that will be understood, or respected. (K, I'll get off my soapbox now, sorry, I've been thinking of joining the air national guard to pay for college and get experience in my field (aeronautics), and these kind of issues are kind of heavy on my mind right now.)

Wow.. Well, that just made my day. Couple weeks ago, I was thinking "Man I wish I'd bought a Roy -1S while I had the chance." My one and only 1/48th is a -1J Hikaru wth fast-packs, and it's kinda lonely... Besides, this'll give me an excuse to buy a set of strike armor. Very good news indeed.. maybe if I get a good price I'll buy two and customize one.. although, I think I lack the guts to try that.

HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR HBAR!!!!!!

Lol.. yeah, good point, that was pretty off the topic here.. I think it got linked in with the idea that M7 was on the "bad' pile of Macross.

But that is a good point about the robots... having seen giant aliens, I guess the best option is to be prepared for anything. Besides, after training pilots for years on the techniques of controlling a mech, it makes sense to keep them in the fleet, keep making them, and just keep the pilots flying them. Once you implement a new type of weapon, it would take serious and costly changes to remove it again, both tactically, and monetarily.

I have to agree with that.. while the story in M7 isn't at all bad compared with some stuff I've seen, the way it's presented is kinda goofy at times. In SDF, the Valk's were purely military vehicles, fighters in a war. The only reason Macross didn't fall victim to what I'm going to dub the "Giant Fighting Robot Fallacy" was because there were actually giant aliens to fight. M7 kind of loses that.. suddenly, some of the Valks are personal vehicles to paint and customize as you see fit.. I'm making a big assumption here, since I haven't seen any giant aliens in M7, so the GFRF appears to be in effect. That may change later, but so far the aliens are the same size as humans. Plus, there is never... EVER... EVER any reason that a giant fighting robot needs boobs. Call them speakers (another joke, since sound doesn't transmit in space anyway ) or sensors (lol) or whatever you want, but they're still boobs.

I guess I can understand people wanting to customize their vehicles.. but oy.. there is such a thing as too much customizing. Course, on the flip side of that.. you're giving a transforming fighter/mecha to a 17 year old pop-singer who's still in the middle of puberty. If Mylene were anything like my sister, she would've plastered it with Happy Bunny stickers, or painted it up to look like Orlando Bloom as Legolas. Given the alternative, it could've been a lot worse than it was. Knowing the female population at my high school, they probably would've come up with everything from Stripper Valks to Cheerleader Valks... which kind of explains the mentality of this picture, but hardly excuses it.

Well, DYRL is kind of odd to me in a way... I enjoyed it, but I really thought the characters were pretty shallow, or not developed much at all. The few character development scenes you see leave the characters pretty one-dimensional. That, plus the awkward silences in so many places kinda just left me waiting for somone to actually say what they were thinking. The little "knowing glance" or "slow nod" bugged me, cause it didn't really tell you anything about the characters. I probably did miss a lot of the background in SDF, and I'm sure DYRL would probably be better after seeing that whole series. But to be honest, the music just kind of got on my nerves. It's like, "oh, we're trapped in an abandoned section of the ship... let's make a music montage of the time there!" or, "Let's do another one while Hikaru and Minmei are out on the town!" There's so much more that could've been done with these scenes, instead of just blasting through them quickly to a blaze of music.

But yeah.. Mac+ had the best dogfight I've ever seen... EVER. One of my favorite things to do in Flight Sim 2004 with my YF-19 and -21 is to fly at ground level through NY City at high speeds.. sweet feeling.

After seeing Wrath a few times, I'm beginning to think that it was only rated well because it blew TMP away in terms of... well, action mainly. The special effects weren't as eye-blowing, but I think that's what kind of ruined TMP.. sensory overload, and plot undervolt. Course, they were both better than ST:V, "The Search for God". found out that steaming pile was directed by Shatner... go figure. First Contact and ST:IV hold a close tie in my mind for the best Trek film... hmm.. time travel.. I'm seeing a trend here.

As far as Macross goes though, I'm witholding most judgement till I see everything. Macross Plus was my first experience with the series, and I loved it wholeheartedly (mostly for the aircraft, but the plot wasn't bad either. ). I can probably say it'll remain my favorite, since I saw it first. Saw DYRL recently, and although not bad by a long shot, the musical interludes kind of annoyed me. I liked the way that the music in Mac+ was kind of just a byproduct of the plot and characters, rather than a large portion of the plot like in DYRL. Granted, that's the way the story was written, and the music was key to winning the battle, but aside from the final song, I think the characters (especially Minmei) would have benefited from a little more personal dialogue like Mac+ had. Now, I haven't seen SDF Macross yet, so I'm probably missing a lot of backstory from that, but it seems like DYRL on its own is a little lacking as far as characters go. I also preferred the style of music in Mac+ somewhat, it tended toward orchestra and piano music rather than pop-singing. "Voices" has to be one of the greatest pieces of music I've ever heard on piano, right up there with the theme from Forrest Gump.

Now, I've only seen a few eps of M7, true the combat is kinda lame at first, and the intro is kinda lacking, but I'll have to wait and see how it turns out later. I'm only up to episode 5, and I'm not hating it yet, so that's a good sign. And as repetitive as the music gets, I don't think it's that bad.

Macross Zero on the other hand is kind of strange compared to the other series.. there's almost no music involved, aside from the Mayan songs that Sara sings... But so far it's been pretty good. I'm eagerly waiting for the last episode.

a UCS valkyrie? i remember there was a member here that posted some pictures of a big ass valkyrie they were building. it wasn't finished cause he had some design/weight issues and he never came back to post any updates.

Hehe... That was me.. I still haven't finished it. Chances are, I'll have to make the legs solid before it will stand up, but I'm stranded at college away from my legos as the moment. No room for them here in my apartment.

There is one part that may hold it up, but I'll need to buy 2-3 AT-ATs first to get the parts, or find them online (it's a pretty rare part), and I'm pretty broke right now.

Btw, I spent a few years perfecting my own UCS versions. They were all in pseudo-mini-fig scale, but I paid strict attention to the classic proportions of the originals. I had an X-Wing, Y-Wing, B-Wing and A-Wing... but I kind of obsessed about the scaling.. I built the X-Wing first, then calculated a scale based on the number of studs long the ship was. Yeah, I'm like that. The X-Wing came out to be about 18 inches long, the Y-Wing was about 2 feet long, the A-wing about 14-15 inches, and the B-wing was a little over 2 feet.. umm.. wide? Anywho, I have photos, but not here. The B-Wing and Y-Wing were taken apart to make the Valk, but the X-Wing and A-Wing are still in my closet. The A-wing turned out best I think, very carefully layered with plates to get the right shape. I just wish I had them here.

Actually, given how much crap has been floating around about how Lucas is screwing over the OT, Brooks has a motherlode of stuff to work with. LOL... actually.. what would be funny... SpaceBalls II should be a rehash of the old movie with scenes completely butchered on purpose, rampant CG effects where they aren't needed, badly redone lines, ridiculously bright flashes everywhere, etc... Knowing Brooks, he could probably do everything Lucas has done to the SW saga, and make it blatantly obvious (as well as completely hilarious), and people would love him for it, just for the sake of the fact that he's making fun of Lucas, and voicing the fans' opinion about his schenanegans.... LOL... If he did that, I imagine Spaceballs II would probably attract more of the SW fanbase than Episode III. I just have this lovely picture in my head of Spaceballs opening the day before Ep III, and stealing all of Lucas's spotlight. Hehe..

Then again, he could just call this Spaceballs: The Special Edition, make the movie completely different, and it might achieve the same effect.

Well, I do know it was used in all the tower-buzzing scenes, and there was one each at Top Gun and on the carrier. Dunno really.

I actually prefer the names used in HotShots... "Knuckle Underwear Velveeta, this is Foxtrot Zulu Milkshake..."

Heh.. here's a funny contradiction.. so... according to Lucas, Jedi aren't supposed to marry.  So, that effectively nixes the EU stories involving Jedi heritage, ie, Corran Horn's family.  However, Lucas, in his infinite wisdom, has also indicated that sensitivity to the Force is a biological phenomenon, passed down genetically, caused by... umm... those "M" things of which I will not speak.

So tell me again how the jedi were forbidden to reproduce, yet lasted 1000+ generations?

Um... you have seen the movies, right? Did you actually watch them?

Correlation != Causality. The "M-things" were not explained to be either cause, or effect. There was definately a noted correlation there in the extremely brief dialogue on the subject, but is it the chicken or the egg that came first again?

All the "M-things" do is give a psuedo-physiological aspect to the whole "Force is strong in my family" schtick.

Reproduction not necessary to keep a Jedi Order of approximately 10,000 out of a Galactic Republic of trillions of individuals from hundreds, if not thousands of species. Corran Horn's Jedi tradition was explicitly stated to be different from the norm.

Lol.. actually, I was just being an arse trying to argue a stupid point, and make Lucas look like an idiot. You're right though, I just think it seems funny that they are forbidden to marry, when without marriage, you kind of rule out a very solid source of force-capable children. I'm thinking of force-power in the purely heriditary sense here too, so that if the jedi didn't produce children, they'd die out. That rules out random genetic mutation though, which, in the light of how many jedi there were, would probably be a more likely source of force-inheritance. What I meant mentioning Corran Horn's line is that his jedi grandfather had no problem marrying, and having children. Also, that kind of kills the whole "Children of the Jedi" storyline. But there's no real conflict there anyway since Lucas doesn't acknowledge the EU as canon.

On the other hand, it also seems likely that not every force sensitive being would automatically give up his life to be a jedi either, leaving a lot of people out there who could produce force sensitive children. So yeah, I was just ranting. I'm still mad at Lucas for trying to explain away force sensitivity with some scientific answer, when it always seemed a more spiritual thing to me. But given that some people can't access it, the biological answer actually makes more sense than anything else.

Heh.. here's a funny contradiction.. so... according to Lucas, Jedi aren't supposed to marry. So, that effectively nixes the EU stories involving Jedi heritage, ie, Corran Horn's family. However, Lucas, in his infinite wisdom, has also indicated that sensitivity to the Force is a biological phenomenon, passed down genetically, caused by... umm... those "M" things of which I will not speak.

So tell me again how the jedi were forbidden to reproduce, yet lasted 1000+ generations?

Granted, yes, this assumes they held the same classic principle of only having children when married. I guess it would work to randomly breed Jedi with each other, and have the children raised by the Jedi community, but I have a hard time seeing that happening.

Hmm.. well, if it runs on a BF1942-like engine, and has vehicles.. my big question that may determine whether I buy or not... how bout spacecraft, ie X-wings, etc, or at least snowspeeders? I've been tempted to get BF1942, but never got around to it. I know there was a BF1942 Star Wars modpack, maybe LucasFarts finally took advice from fans, and used some of their ideas?

Oh heck yeah.. I'd gladly buy myself one of those given the chance. Although.. if they made those Manta fighters, I'd have trouble choosing.

Honestly, aside from the final gag, the funniest part I thought was the part where the two of them wake up in bed in Shangri-La, then Polly tells Joe to turn around.

It probably was the best movie I've seen in a long time.

Oh, btw, I hope George Lucas has been taking notes.. THAT is how you do a street-level dogfight.

Just to ask, did anyone else see the air-carrier and think to themselves, "Huh.. Cloud City...?"

Well, having seen it now, I think it pretty much lives up to the hype. Especially in the visual area.. but honestly, that wasn't what my friends and I noticed most...

What we really couldn't help pointing out were... get ready for this one.. all the parodies/references to stuff from Star Wars. It really does have that old Buck Rogers feel to it, almost to the point of something like a graphic novel (the montage scenes of typing and such really were kind of weird at first, but they made an interesting effect). The stylization of some scenes also looked like it came straight out of a war recruitment poster, or something of that sort, and seemed funny acted out, but it seemed to work okay. But we were amazed by all the stuff that seemed to mirror Star Wars.. one line was actually taken directly from it, and I don't mean just the "I have a bad feeling about this." It was mostly in the way of an easter egg, it wasn't a line that most non-Star Wars fanatics would remember at all, much less be able to place. I'd have to see it again to remember most of them, but it kept us laughing for quite a while. One of my friends made a comment though that was pretty interesting to think about.. about 15 minutes in to the movie, during a mid-New York street-level dogfight, he said "Heh.. this movie's only beginning and it's already more like Star Wars than episodes one and two combined!" I had to agree really.

The plot was hokey, sure, but at least having seen it, the title makes sense now. It also had a lot of quite funny situational humor thrown in, but it didn't try to be overly funny, which was good. The characters weren't well defined at first, but as the characters gained depth and got on each others nerves, the conversations became the source of quite a few laughs, and some background for the characters.

On the down side, the plot really is pretty corny, as well as a good portion of the dialog, but it doesn't really seem out of place. Also, while cool, there is no way the P-40 could survive through the maneuvers it was put through, much less fly from NY to Nepal without refueling. The aircraft were pure sci-fi magic, albeit 1930's sci-fi magic.

All in all it was worth the ticket though, it had some really good parts and some really funny humor and references thrown in. Not spectacular, but considering I went in expecting it to pretty much bomb, I was pleasantly surprised, especially by the twist at the ending.

Now, keep this in mind, I'm not the greatest reviewer, and I've thought some real trash was decent. I'm pretty easy to please. But my friends all agreed it was pretty good, and we had a fun time. Given that that's the main reason I went in the first place, I wasn't disappointed.

Hmm..

Good Ideas:

1. Rogue Squadron series based on comics and/or novels (I would give my left ear to SEE one of Janson and Wedge's practical joke wars. Yub yub, Commander.)

2. Miniseries DIRECT adaptations of various books

3. Series about the Jedi Academy, old or new

4. Maybe a collection of stories based in the Old Republic, like the Sith Wars

Bad Ideas:

1. ANYTHING to do with an Ewok family...unnngngg...

2. "It's the Ewoks-Droids Cartoon Hour!"

3. Making any series that involves the original characters without using the original actors, unless they're supposed to be younger versions.

4. eh, there's a lot of bad ideas out there...

Now, coming out of left field....

1. THE DARK APPRENTICE: Trump in Emperor garb sends contestants out to perform dark deeds, murder, pillage, promote Imperial control, etc. Shoots lightning from hand during "You're fired" line, vaporizing losers on the spot. Winner receives job as Emperor's Hand (Gotta replace Mara Jade, you know..)

2. Survivor: Alderaan.... hehe.. yeah, right.

3. Survivor: Tatooine: Mannn.... Roast Dewback AGAIN???

4. Boy Meets Force: Jedi Academy drama/comedy involving young teens growing up while going through jedi training. Heheh.. just imagining Feeny as a Jedi master makes me laugh. A lot. ("Use the Force, Mr. Matthews.") And for once, Topanga wouldn't be any weirder than the other names. Course, letting Eric within ten miles of anything like a lightsaber would probably be a bad idea.

There are so many things they could do.. and soooo many ways they could ruin what was always good about SW.

You know.. now that I think about it, genetic degradation might explain why the stormtroopers tended to be complete idiots, or at least horrible at killing anything. Heavily recycled genes....

Well, I honestly can't tell for sure, but I wouldn't give up entirely on the original versions of the films being released.. While watching Empire of Dreams tonight, I noticed a few things that gave me hope. Mainly, the fact that the original film from Episode IV HAS been restored.. and I don't mean the Special Edition stuff, I mean the old motion control battle scenes with models flying every which way. It's not for certain, and I guess it could have been from the THX release a while back, but it looked every bit as crisp and clean as any of the DVD shots I've seen. All, the old shots of the DS battle looked perfectly cleaned up, and the gunnery scene on the Falcon looked similarly clear. Also, when they showed shots of the original title scroll, it was clearly remastered for clarity, but lacked the separate EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE line. So that proves that they've restored at least a part of the original version. Whether that means they've done the same to the whole movie, and will release it later remains to be seen, but I did see one shot of the original Greedo scene in there.

I'll probably buy the new DVD set even with the screwed up Anakin ghost, just so I can actually have a set of my own. It's actually not as bad as I imagined it would be... I had assumed they would replace the dying Vader footage as well, with Hayden in a bunch of age/scar makeup, so thank God they didn't go that far. I'm leaving home for college, and no one is gonna let me take the old videos with me when I go. Besides, I've been dying to rip some real sounds and screenshots from the movies for years (FINALLY, a good accurate reference for building my X-Wing models ). If they release the originals later, I'll probably get them too, since we've refrained from buying the prequels, but that's just me. Maybe if I download a rip of the laserdisc set, I'll splice in the original Anakin footage just for the heck of it, and make a new DVD (heck, if I go that far, I'll replace Anakin's face and voice in Episode II with a cut and paste of William Shatner- the acting might be better ). But it's not that big a deal for me. I can always just fast forward.

As for the later episodes, how the heck are they gonna do that? I was under the impression that Timothy Zahn got specific permission from Lucasfilm to make those first novels, allowing him to write the story. I guess I was wrong... But either way, there's probably no way the sequels will have any success with fans. Writing new stories for after Endor would pretty much negate any of the already accepted storylines and character relationships in the EU, as well as tick off a lot of authors who went to a lot of work to continue the story, only to be completely ignored by the man whose story they were contributing to, and previously seemed to acknowledge their efforts. GL will probably cut off a lot of his fanbase by saying all those books don't count. If anything, they should be making movies OF those books. Both the Thrawn Trilogy and Jedi Academy Trilogy would make incredible movies.

WOW.. judging by the size of that helmet on the X-Wing's nose, it looks a little small, but very nice... maybe it's just the wings being open that's fooling me. should be about 42 feet long if it's full scale.

Btw, if you've ever read the X-Wing series of novels (#5 Wraith Squadron and #6 Iron Fist to be specific), one of the pilots made some modifications to his personal R2 that follow right along with that lightsaber launcher, but is a much more useful feature in real life. He had it so that if he called his droid and gave him the command "Cold One" he'd launch a chilled drink out through that same port. Would be fun to rig something like that up with a voice command module, and try it out at parties.

You know, I might be insane, but did you first introduce this design in the X-Wing Alliance modding community? I remember seeing this at X-Wing Legacy a few years back, I think...

Well, I can't say there has been no progress, since I did get FS2004, and am working to adapt it for that, but there has been little else that I've done. As soon as I get the effects and flaps working in 2004, I'll release a verion with textures, but that will be a while.... right now I'm concentrating on getting ready to move my stuff to my apartment for the coming year. The virtual cockpit is pretty crummy so far, but it's textured and looks ok, but not great. The textures are really low-res in it, since right now the virtual cockpit is just a copy of the exterior cockpit, and has no moving parts or anything. But once I get the flaps working, and the engines lit right, I'll put up something for y'all to play with.